Charlie Watts’ heartwarming ode to Charlie Parker
Rolling Stone drummer Charlie Watts was just 13 when he heard Charlie Parker for the first time. It was a formative moment for the young musician, triggering a life-long love of jazz: “I am what I am, thanks to this man,” he later said. A high-flying bird of enormous influence, Parker died in 1955 at the age of just 34. Five years later, Watts wrote and illustrated a children’s book honouring the jazz pioneer, hoping it would introduce a new generation to his music.
“Frustrated with what life had to offer him in his hometown, he packed his whistle, pecked his ma goodbye and flew from his nest in Kansas City bound for New York.” So goes the opening line to Ode to a High-Flying Bird, written and illustrated by Watts a full three years before he joined The Rolling Stones. Before rock ‘n’ roll took over his life, he was a jazz head just like his childhood friend Dave Green, who would go on to become a sought-after jazz bassist. Together, they obsessed over their latest 78rpm records, especially trad jazz records by the likes of Jelly Roll Morton and Charlie Parker Green and Thelonious Monk.
In the late ’50s, he enrolled at Harrow Art School in London and stayed there until 1960, at which point he began working as a graphic designer for an advertising company. One of the countless young people caught up in the office boom of the early ’60s, Watts sought relief from his corporate lifestyle by drawing, writing and playing in local bands, including the Middlesex R&B outfit Jo Jones All Stars. After familiarising himself with rhythm and blues drumming, which he quickly learnt was not merely down-tempo jazz, Watts was approached by Blues Incorporated bandleader Alexis Korner, through whom he would meet the other members of The Rolling Stones.
Though Watts’ newfound fame meant he had to put jazz drumming on the back burner, the Stones’ success sparked much interest in Ode to a High Flying Bird. “This guy who published ‘Rolling Stones Monthly’ saw my book and said ‘Ah, there’s a few bob in this!’” Watts would later recall. The 36-page book was subsequently published by Beat Publications on January 17th, 1965, priced at seven shillings.
Watts love for Parker never waned. In 1992 he recorded a jazz album called A Tribute To Charlie Parker, which he toured with his own jazz quintet – marking the achievement of a life-long ambition. “I did actually make a saxophone out of newspaper when I was really young,” Watts told NPR back in 1991. “It’s a life, in a Hollywood kinda way, that i’ve always loved, you know? The smokey nightclub. Four o’clock in the morning. 52nd Street. Parker playing. When I first went to New York with the Stones, the first thing I did was go to Birdland. And that was it – I’d seen America. “
